


The Final Twist in the Tale of Harlan Thrombey

by belladonnaprice



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21542332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belladonnaprice/pseuds/belladonnaprice
Summary: Marta receives a letter a year after Harlan's death.Needless to say, massive spoilers for the movie.
Comments: 40
Kudos: 528





	The Final Twist in the Tale of Harlan Thrombey

Marta spends the first year of her life in the mausoleum scrambling to find her footing. There are many things that require her attention. The business, the money, the care-taking of the building and grounds.

Trustworthy people are hard to find. People _she_ can trust are even harder. This is the lesson Ransom taught her too well. Not everyone who listens earnestly and speaks of her well-being, even when seeming to act in their own self-interest, can be trusted.

Detective Blanc refers her to a few honest men he’s worked with in his years of sleuthing. Her sister and Meg take to the internet for people with creative and community-serving ideas for the dispersal and usage of her inheritance. With time, the house begins to feel like hers.

One day she looks up from her dinner and thinks, that has to go.

\---

The large house is filled with knick-knacks. Some priceless, some tasteless, but all with keenly interested buyers. The hullaballoo surrounding the old man’s death only whetted appetites further.

In the end, it is her sister who finds it whilst sorting through the bric-a-brac, tucked in to a book of Akkadian archaeology.

\---

My darling little Marta,

Perhaps you’ve found this letter within hours of my demise; perhaps it finds you many years hence. The only thing I can say for certain is that I will be quite dead by the time you read this.

Being a man of my years and condition, I know I am not long for this world. The quiet companionship you gifted me with during our acquaintance has made my twilight years rather more joyful than they might otherwise have been. You have endured my nitwit offspring beautifully.

These petty assholes snipe and grasp and scheme. They build empires on a foundation of other’s hard work and gullibility. They believe they are entitled to all that there is and give nothing but empty words and false promises in return. Even my darling daughter, my first born, is cursed with these shortcomings. What can I conclude, but that these are failings of nature? Surely their rearing took place at such disparate times in my life and popularity that nurture cannot be to blame? Their mother, God rest her, did her best to keep the madness at bay, but with her passing I’m afraid it infected us all.

Simply put, they are not good people (nor perhaps am I). The fortune and renown I have amassed would be squabbled over and, indeed, squandered. 

I came to the realization that I needed to make you my sole inheritor, but the question remained as to how. The aforementioned scurrilous nature of my children and theirs made any outright declarations far too perilous for you.

I knew I needed to ensure your right to inherit beyond contestation or condemnation.

And so the machinations began.

That article in the paper was the first piece. I needed an honest man and a true gumshoe to keep you and your gentle heart out of handcuffs. Monsieur Blanc fitted that description beautifully.

Having bandied about a man worthy of solving my mysteries, I started settling old debts and righting what I had been neglecting (out of love or pride, a man cannot quite say for sure of himself). 

A private detective of some proficiency revealed my son-in-law’s infidelity. With young Ransom in prison for my murder and her adulterous husband behind her, I hope Linda will be able to slough off her old ways. I pray the charming little puzzle solver of her youth will once again surface.

My son Neil is long beyond my reach, and his wife is both a poor business manager and a sneak. My grandchild is caught in that web of lies, but not yet spinning her own. She at least wishes to improve the world, if, perhaps, in too cavalier a way.

And my youngest child. Walter. Too long did I allow him to ride on my coattails, never creating worlds for himself. Not clever enough by half to do so. Haranguing me day after day to whore my words to Hollywood. To make them into _thrillers._ I think not sir. The written word will always be a far more elegant mode of storytelling.

Young Walt must become his own man. Cutting him off is the only way I can see to do that. As well, his child and wife are far too easily swayed and need to be kept far away from my accumulated wealth and power.

My family dealt with, I now need to set things in motion.

I know that little prick Ransom will take the bait. Of all my children and grandchildren, I believe him to be the most capable of murder. There's a certain coldness to his actions; always calculating and elated at others' travails. Telling him I made you my sole heir will incense him beyond reason, but not, I hope, beyond scheming. Having been my research assistant, I know he is too conniving for his (or my) own good. He could have been a decent author in his own right had he the work ethic for it. Certainly, his head for details could have served him well.

I have planned this as thoroughly as someone who has endured these people for fifty-some odd years can. There will be things that I cannot account for, but your analytical mind has always been apparent in our games. I trust you will be quick enough to save yourself.

And so, I am the mastermind behind my own death. Not quite a suicide as the world may see it, but certainly a demise of my own making. A fine final chapter, eh darling Marta?

Now for the hard part.

I need you to uphold, or dismantle, my legacy as you see fit.

I do not envy the onerous task ahead of you. But I do trust you will manage it magnificently.

Your grace and generosity of spirit will serve you well in the years to come,

With my greatest regard,

Harlan

\---

Marta set aside the letter.

In some ways, she was angry with him. He had preyed on and played her heart like a master puppeteer. In others, she understood with painful clarity why he had done it.

Legacy, above all else, was his concern. What was he leaving behind but, in his own words, paltry bits of fiction and shitty children. And now he had charged her with this.

Not content to simply let her inherit and release her, but this.

Well.

She already had plans in place didn’t she? Lawyers to keep her mother safe. Investment people to make sure they were all taken care of financially. Grants and charities that hadn’t existed a few months ago now making a difference in the world.

So she would do as he asked. Not by playing her own game, but by creating a beautiful design.

**Author's Note:**

> The movie was a delight, but it was so terribly aware of it's own genre. I began to wonder if it was something Harlan had written all along. 
> 
> Mostly just a thought that wouldn't let me alone until I exorcised it into a word document :)


End file.
